


Alpha Shallows

by Inaccessible Rail (strangetales)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, archive warnings: bad poetry, archive warnings: vague sexual situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 00:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4458314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetales/pseuds/Inaccessible%20Rail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott could hear Stiles’ manic, high-pitched voice on the other end, crackling with shitty service, wandering through the Goddamn <i>desert</i>; “Friends don’t let friends waste away in crazy houses.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alpha Shallows

**Author's Note:**

> Very obviously we’re still in the dark as far as the timelines are concerned, so anything goes (like time jumps, for example). The title “Alpha Shallows” is a song by Laura Marling. Also know, that I don't necessarily think this is my finest work, but it's been sitting open on my computer for like weeks at this point and I really just needed it posted. I apologize if it is shitty.

_When had it happened?_ Senior year, sometime after Tracy’s death, he _thinks_ — before that, maybe? Allison’s name seems to form, loudly, repeatedly, in his head every time he asks himself; _when had he lost her?_

Scott could hear Stiles’ manic, high-pitched voice on the other end, crackling with shitty service, wandering through the Goddamn _desert_ ; “Friends don’t let friends waste away in crazy houses.”

Allison would have never forgiven him, he’s fairly certain. Both of their faces are seared onto the backs of his eyelids, eternally gaunt, death-like, disappointed. But Lydia is _still alive_ , he frequently reminds himself, there is in fact a difference between being dead and being tired, and if he could only _wake her up_. The doctors had said she couldn’t be woken, but he can’t for the life of him figure out why he had so easily accepted their clichéd, placating doctor-speech. Stiles hadn’t been so easily convinced, but then again he never was, and so was easily dismissed in turn.

_When had he lost her?_

Lydia’s eyes were always open in the way a corpses’ eyes are open, as if they _would_ close them if they only _could_. He resists the unsettling, morbid urge to gently shut them, as if to say, “It’s over now; you’re done now; you can stop now.” But she is so very _not dead_ and he can’t just give up, and after Stiles’ panicked phone call the night before his decision had already been made. 

On a rainy Sunday he finds her, with her eyes closed. Small wrists strapped to a stiff, musty cot; hair damp and brittle, skin pale, covered in a thin layer of sweat. 

“God gives people the day off on Sundays,” Stiles had mumbled distractedly from behind the wheel of the Jeep. “I’m not sure we read the same book,” Scott had stoically replied in the silent darkness of his bedroom. “Fine. God gives people in _America_ the day off on Sundays.”

While it _was_ true that more than half of Beacon Hills shuts down on Sundays, Eichen House was not one of them, although the number of guards and nurses was lower than usual, and technically no visitors were allowed. He shuffles her out the front door into a cold, misty morning and leaves a few stained, lumpy pillows in her place. “I found you,” he whispers into her hair, smelling of antiseptic and exhaustion, “I found you.”

**one year later.**

Late afternoon sunlight floods the sparse loft with gentle warmth and a strong sense of relief. At the beginning of August, the heat has started to become unbearable, and she looks forward to the cool, nighttime air. It's quiet but for the sound of her fists against the worn, canvas punching bag, and the soles of her sneakers against the smooth, cement floor. There is a lively flush to her cheeks, and a roundness to her face that has only recently returned. Her hair is once again thick and shiny, twisted into a bun at the top of her head. She washes it a little too roughly sometimes, she knows, convinced that the smell of antiseptic and rot remains, deep in the roots.

It had taken her a while to remember how to speak, and then, to speak louder than a whisper; to remember that there were human ears to hear, super-human, even, and her voice worked just fine. She was a little bit in love with the sound of her own voice, and not in the obnoxious way, as if any particular thought that popped into her head was worthy of being shared by the very virtue of it being hers, but in a far more intimate, physical way. A way that might have inspired in her the strange image of embracing her own sound, it’s raspy quality, it’s pitch, the way it wrapped her words as if they were in a box, and her voice the ribbon.

She thought Scott was a little bit in love with her voice too. The way he listened, so intently, she could see the way his shoulders would tense with the effort of blocking out all the mundane sounds he couldn’t help but hear; the pipes dripping on the floor above, the mice squeaking within the walls; all this he muffled in favor of her voice, telling him they were out of milk, to close the window, to turn on the radio.

The complexity was still there, the intricate mind, always working. She wrote a lot; a lot of essays, a lot of poetry, a lot of math equations. The poetry was a lot like the math equations but she referred to her prose as post-modern and left it at that, as if there were any complaints. Her only reader was Scott, and he didn’t say much in response anyway, would merely slip them back under her door when he had finished.

Wiping a wrapped, reddened hand across her slick forehead she pondered the emptiness of the loft. She would never say so, but she sort of hated when Scott was in class. Derek’s loft was more than big enough for two people, with minimal furniture, light fixtures, and bare walls, the space was made of echoes, and she wasn’t crazy about being alone. _But she would never say so._ He would stop going to classes, he would say that he would just make it up, work from home, but it _wouldn’t_ work, he would put it on the back-burner for _her_ , and she would never be able to forgive herself.

Turning on the radio before she could lose herself in the depressing seesaw of who should be forgiving whom, she shook her hair from its confines, and stepped beneath the cooling spray of the shower.

…

It had taken him a while to stop watching her while she slept, listening for irregular heartbeats or strained breathing. It was a strange thing, she had seemed far more corpse-like when her eyes had been open and vacant. In sleep, she was more alive than he had seen her in months. With every healthy beat of her heart, a dash of color returned to the pale skin of her face, and with every easy breath she took his own chest became a little less tight.

The first night she had woken up after he had taken her from Eichen House she had already convinced herself he was dead. It had been naïve of him to expect anything more, but with his own relief came an outdated idealism; maybe she would smile, her eyes would “light up,” she would say his name. Maybe. She had screamed, _shrieked_ , the windows had shattered in their frames, glass flying, and he had held her to his chest as the flecks of glass buried themselves in his back.

“Lydia,” he had whispered, hoarse, an irritating pressure gathering behind his eyes, “Lydia,” until he had said her name so many times it became a stranger in his mouth. _Lydia._

“I thought you were dead,” her voice muffled, sobbing into his shirt, “I saw you die. _I thought you were dead_.”

She wrote his various deaths into formulaic poetry that he probably shouldn’t have enjoyed reading as much as he did. “Morbid, much?” Stiles had remarked over the phone once, voice distracted. Scott had shrugged, and the call ended in mutual silence.

Convincing her that he was indeed alive and not dead a thousand times over was an exercise in frequent physical communication. The loft was quieter than usual those first few weeks, sound was relegated to that of “noises the building makes” and “noises the body makes,” heavy breaths and light breaths, nails scratching against the skin, a sneeze, a cough, a sob. She held his hand a lot. He had washed her hair that first night, until he could barely tell the difference between her scent and his own.

…

He returned home from class later that night, cradling a small, slightly fuzzy plant that reminded her of a cactus. It lacked roots. It was peach-colored in some places.

Savoring the post-shower chill in the air, Lydia stood, damp and tired against the kitchen table, wrapped in a large towel she had probably spent too much money on. The excess water from her hair dripped steadily to the floor at her feet, forming a small puddle. 

“What is that?”

“It’s an air plant!” he answered excitedly, “I spoke with the woman at the store,” he continued, placing it gently inside a small, empty whiskey glass, “for once the odds are not against us.”

She smiled at his enthusiasm, but raised one practiced, disbelieving eyebrow.

“This plant will live,” he pressed, determined.

It wasn’t the first time that Scott had tried to “liven the place up,” various wall hangings, light fixtures, plants, and even a cat that one time, but it hadn’t liked Scott very much and Lydia even less. “They can sense these things,” she had answered softly, face hidden in a book. “It’s fine.”

He looked up at her with an absolutely absurd _twinkle_ in his stupidly charming eyes, “Not feeling the urge to let out a scream by any chance, are you?”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes, retreating to her bedroom, a small trail of water left in her wake.

…

Lydia hadn’t enjoyed talking to many people besides Scott afterwards; not even her mom, but Malia had turned out be one of those people who seemed to understand what she needed. Maybe it had been all those years she spent without a voice of her own, trapped in her head. It also helped that she rarely, if ever, pitied her; the tactlessness had been refreshing. Sometimes.

“Are you two sharing a bed yet?”

Lydia moved so abruptly from her horizontal position on the bed to a horrified, seated one that she felt her neck stretch painfully from the whiplash-like movement, phone just barely still in hand, listening for any indication that Scott had heard from the kitchen. At least the television was on.

“Excuse me?” she hissed, eyes darting to the back of her closed door.

Malia huffed impatiently, “Stiles and I are gonna be around for a few weeks, having a room not piled to the ceiling with boxes would be nice.”

“You have your ‘own room’ all the time,” Lydia mumbled.

“Yeah, well,” she began, sighing, “I’ve become accustomed to a certain standard of living.”

“Well, we’re not, we’re not going to be, and I wish you would stop asking that question _so loudly_.”

She thought she could hear Stiles somewhere in the distance release some kind of loud, choking laughter, and she winced, irritated.

“I’m speaking at a normal volume.”

Lydia returned to her comfortable position on top of the mussed sheets, knees tucked to her chest, phone to her ear. Quietly, “Just bring the air mattress again, okay?”

There was a beat of silence at the other end, and Lydia could see it perfectly, the shared glance between the two of them. _Poor Lydia._ “Yeah,” Malia answered, voice softer than before, “will do. We’ll see you guys soon. Love you.”

“Bye,” she answered softly. Ending the call, she swiftly buried the phone beneath her pillow, as if she could smother the conversation out of existence.

…

It had only been a kiss, kind of. Brief, but torturously long at the same time, heavy and meaningless all at once, and he had tried not to think of it, but it was there, in all the quiet moments, in all the noisy ones, and he couldn’t forget the unbelievable _feeling_. It had been a month or so since he had “absconded” with her, things had begun to settle into a routine, and the illusion of normality had come as a deceptive comfort to them both. Until he had ruined it, saw her hair in _just_ the right light, felt her hand move in his, palms flattened against one another’s in _just_ the right moment. _He had fucked it up._

Half asleep, waking her up from frequent nightmares (which had unsurprisingly returned), tucking her into his side, breathing against her back, _alive_ , and she had, unexpectedly, uncomfortably turned her neck in order to awkwardly knock his chin, and he had seen her face in an oddly beautiful profile, and his lips had landed against the corner of her mouth and they had both froze; in fear or in perfection neither could discern, but at some point it _did_ end, her head returning to her pillow, his face buried in her hair, and he had stayed until morning, slipping out before she woke. A kiss. Kind of.

…

They come for her on a Wednesday, full of thunder. In the brief moments in between her surprise and fear, she took the time to be properly angry with herself. How had neither of them prepared for this scenario? They had gotten too wrapped up in their stupid, quiet little world; where he brought home useless, decorative plants, and she wrote him depressing, stiff poetry about how he was going to die. Of course they would want her back, too much untapped potential and hidden knowledge locked away in her pretty little head.

…

Scott finds her in a shallow pool of blood and refrains from wincing disdainfully at the strong scent of iron and terror that lingers in the room. He tries to think beyond this moment, to the opening of windows, the obnoxious pop music, the warring smells of radioactive cleaning products and expensive scented candles; when this moment will have been long over and all that’s left is the aftermath, but then he hears a soft sniffling from the far side of the room and returns to the slightly nauseating present.

She’s only slightly worse for wear, a bit bloodied (though most of it attributed to the dead man), more exhausted than anything else. There’s a purplish stain growing along her jaw, but Scott is more concerned with the vacant, glazed look in her eye; the way it had been that first evening and the few days following her liberation from Eichen House.

“Hey,” he said softly, stepping over the stiffening corpse between them. For a moment he feared she wouldn’t answer him, and if his ears had been anything but “super,” he would have missed her shaky “Hi,” in response.

Her cheeks were damp against his hands as he gently cupped her face, willing her to glance up at him, to look at him as if he were really there, and not a ghost, as she had so often in the past.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he whispered earnestly, inquiring gaze pained, “ _I should have been here._ ”

“Don’t be silly,” Lydia answered, her voice slightly hoarse, desperately in need of sleep, “this isn’t your fault.”

Scott couldn’t help but think that it _was_ his fault, that if he hadn’t been bitten all those years ago, then maybe Lydia’s “gifts” would have remain buried, and maybe her life would have continued on in blissful ignorance. But another part of him, the older, wiser, less naïve part, knew that the Lydia who sat before him accepted this part of herself, and maybe trusted Scott to accept that part of her as well, and that for however horrific their lives had become, given the option, Lydia could no longer linger in the fantasy that she wasn’t a banshee, or that he wasn’t a werewolf. The monster would have awoken regardless, and at least they were together.

…

An uncharacteristically cool wind had blown through the cracked window in the bathroom all evening, so the floor was cold against her bare feet as Scott guided her towards the shower, his warm chest a strong presence at her back. Despite the small shiver up her spine, she appreciated the fresh, crisp air from outside, a distinct departure from the putrid smells of the living room.

And she couldn’t stop staring at his mouth. When he turned on the shower, _hot_ , when he helped her with the complicated buttons at the front of her dress, and, obviously, when he spoke, mumbling something about “disposing of the body,” anxious, as if he could feel her eyes on his lips. His fingers had barely shook when he had helped with her clothes, like he was trying to hide it, but she could tell, and she sighed beneath the warmth of the shower, pressed her hands hard against her ribcage to silence her own heart.

When her fingertips start to wrinkle she quietly says his name beneath the sheets of noisy water, and her voice feels exceptionally loud within the tiled walls of the shower despite having almost whispered it. And then he’s there, the door is closing softly behind him and it feels pleasantly definitive, like a long agonized over decision finally being made.

“Everything okay?” he asks softly, and she can practically hear his hands resting nervously in his pockets.

“I need your help,” she answers, closing her eyes, letting the words escape from her mouth, “with my hair.”

She knows it’s not her smoothest line, but it seems to be the closest she could get before explicitly asking him to join her in the shower and since she’s not feeling particularly flirtatious it’ll have to do. And that’s their beauty anyway, the saying without actually being said, and she knows that it’s happening exactly as it was meant to, all tragic and enlightening at the same damn time, unfortunate but they’re both grateful. In either of their lives they could never have the good without having some of the bad.

…

It’s not an “almost” anything. They would never be able to ignore this, easily excuse it as they had before and never mention it again. She didn’t want to excuse or forget, and she knew that Scott didn’t either; she could feel it in the way he held her, his arms wrapped around her waist, she knew that there was no coming back from this, and why would they want to?

There wasn’t much room for words anymore, but she did feel a few, against the wet skin of her neck, and in the vibration against her back, a kind of prayer, to her or to whomever, or whatever was listening, “ _Please, let me keep this,_ ” and it was as if he was speaking for her, for them, for their pack of traumatized friends who deserve that _one thing_ in the nightmare that was their lives, and she felt it echo within her. _Please, let me keep this._

On his knees in front of her, those lips she had been staring at so intently earlier, pressed against the soft flesh of her stomach, against her thigh, between her legs, and she silently gasps, lets the water run into her mouth and over her lips and she has to remember to shut them tight again lest she drown.

Her back pressed impossibly gently against the tile, her face hidden in the crook of his neck until she can’t stand it anymore and her lips are suddenly pressed so perfectly against his own, a real kiss, unmistakable and purposeful. Shared breath and smiles beneath the water that’s begun to cool now but neither of them can bring themselves to care that much, she’s just _so happy_ to be full again, and as he wraps her up in her stupid, expensive towel, she thinks of a poem lacking in death, and it’s sappy as hell, but she thinks he'll like it anyway.

…

Stiles and Malia arrive a few days later, and the loft is ripe with clues of the last few days. Both the home invasion and the shower that followed, so all four friends awkwardly make their way through a fairly heavy conversation that ends with an actual bedroom for their guests and a shy smile from the hosts. They discuss another possible attempt at capturing Lydia but the subject seems to lack the fervor that it once had, and they end up directing the conversation to other things, like all the air plants hanging in the window, and how it’s strange that they can live without roots. 

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all can find me on Tumblr, at [starlessness](http://starlessness.tumblr.com).


End file.
